OWL

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  OWL on the inside

Inspiration

We really wanted to create a system that could assist people in living independent lives. We wanted this project to be cost efficient, effective and easy on the eye. During a wild brainstorming session, my friend's hands froze over her shoulder and the backronym OWL was born.

What it does

OWL is a data hub that regulates information collected from a number of monitoring devices, such as a wrist watch heart rate monitor, or a motion sensor. This information is then stored and interpreted by a number of software like Python and voice recognition, that can ask the user for input: Q: "Would you like me to dial 911?" A: "Yes/No/Wait"

How we built it

We threw together pieces from the Mindstorms kit: ultrasonic sensor, brick, and several legos to keep everything together. Then in place of felt and stuffing, we wrapped the whole thing in a t shirt to imitate the OWL exterior.

Challenges we ran into

Because we haven't used Mindstorms since elementary school, we have forgotten a lot of the basic steps to writing a program in that language. Furthermore, we had trouble with getting the sensor to operate on greater distances, but then realized that with the equipment available to us, that was sadly impossible.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am particularly proud of our ability to overcome roadblocks such as forgetting an entire language, and losing and gaining a team member.

What we learned

From this challenge, we learned that delegating and prioritizing is crucial to successful teamwork. In the beginning we all focused on figuring out the program, instead of readying our presentation. However, after some consultation from mentors we divided and conquered the project, and got it done quickly and efficiently.

What's next for OWL

OWL will begin to network with other devices via Bluetooth and WiFi. It will become the data hub (center of regulation, if you will), for the OWL system, a multitude of devices tailored to one's needs.

Built With

• mindstorm